Various systems have been developed to allocate work among resources or agents associated with an enterprise. For example, automatic call distribution systems are available that are capable of distributing calls or other contacts to call or contact handling agents according to some predefined criteria. Enterprises would like to know the costs associated with serving and selling to their customers using contact handling agents. They also would like to know not just how their contact center agents spend their time, but what they are working on and who they are serving when they do that work. In addition, in order to meet service level targets, it is important that agents occupy themselves with work-related contacts or aftercontact work as fully as reasonably possible. Accordingly, it is desirable to account for how agents spend their time and for whom.
In this regard, it has been impractical or impossible for contact distribution systems to associate related contacts. Instead, contact distribution systems have been able to collect information about incoming contacts only, as the customer or other person initiating the contact will typically dial a number or sequence of numbers, or otherwise address their contact such that information regarding the nature of and/or reason for the contact can be determined. However, there has been no way to efficiently or accurately determine whether contacts initiated by an agent are associated with work-related contacts, or are not work-related. In particular, systems that have attempted to track contacts initiated by the agent that are available or that have been proposed depend on the agent to accurately enter information, or on complex speech recognition systems. Furthermore, although systems have had at least a limited capability to record agent contacts and allow later analysis of those contacts, interrelations between contacts are not shown by such systems.